Forgotten History - Friday, January 12, 2001
"Little known facts and overlooked history"
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The Myth of Spitting
One of the lasting myths of the Vietnam War is that veterans,
upon returning home, were spat upon by anti-war protesters.
This is simply not true. There may have been some isolated
incidents of this kind of conduct, however, the record shows
that this type of abuse did not occur when veterans returned.
This is not to say that some members of the anti-war movement
were hostile, but by and large, the anti-war movement viewed
the veteran as a victim of our government's policies.
How does one disprove a myth? Well, one of the things that
can be done is to look at records of the time. Do any incidents of
spitting on veterans appear in either the Los Angeles Times, New York
Times or the San Francisco Chronicle.
No, they don't! In fact, a look at articles in magazines of
that time period find no references to anti-war protesters
spitting on veterans. Neither are there any pictures of
these supposed incidents. Logic would dictate that if this
occurred, at the level that is said, then some photographer
would have taken a picture. In fact, there aren't any
existing pictures offered by the FBI, the army, news services,
the returning veterans themselves, all of whom had the power
to record incidents of this type. Furthermore, there isn't
even written proof of these veterans reporting these alleged
incidents to the proper authorities.
Ask yourself this question, why are there not police reports
of spitting incidents. If veterans returned home and were
greeted by angry protesters don't you think some would have
been arrested? So how has this become part of our national
myth? John O'Conner, a marine chaplain who would go on to
become Cardinal O'Conner speaks of anti-war protesters
spitting on soldiers at the Pentagon protests of 1967. This
too is a lie. There were hundreds of camera people there at
the time. We see pictures of protesters putting flowers in
the barrel of rifles, we see protesters and the police
battle, but no pictures of spitting. When asked to be specific
O'Conner declined. That's because it never happened.
When Dr. Robert Lifton began giving psychiatric evaluations
of returning veterans, his work would serve to pave the way
for the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress (PTS.) Dr. Lifton
reported that no veterans gave any examples of this kind
of behavior. The fact of the matter is that the most abusive
treatment of veterans did not come from hippie girls, as the
fourth rate hack Bob Greene of the Chicago Sun Times reported,
but from the administration and VFW halls across the nation.
Many veterans that I have spoken to remember being abused by
VFW members who often ridiculed them. They did this by telling
the returning veterans that their war was not a real war
or often asked them, "why they couldn't win their war?" The
other group to abuse veterans was Richard Nixon's administration
whose VA refused to treat them for agent orange
poisoning. Nixon also used informants against the veterans
that opposed the war and turned the FBI loose to disrupt
their activities.
There was, however, one group that did indeed spit on
veterans. The young republicans who spat upon on Ron Kovic
and other veterans at the 1972 republican convention. The
veterans were protesting and calling for an end to the war
in Vietnam and were greeted by the young zealots of the GOP
who cursed and spat upon them. Let's get the record straight
once and for all. It was the administration who abused veterans
by sending them to fight and die and then not taking care of
them afterward, not the anti-war movement.
Sources: Interview with veterans for the documentary,
Citizen Soldiers: The Story of the VVAW.
The Spitting Image: Jerry Lembcke
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